Wednesday, April 24, 2013

When I was
growing up television was considered the “Kmart” of the entertainment
world. I mean first you have the theater (Target), then you have the
movies (Walmart). Then television. No serious actor would be caught dead in
television. Or if you had to do it,
everybody else had better be doing it.
Such as a guest spot on the Love Boat.
Check out all the stars that appeared on The Love Boat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Love_Boat_guest_stars

As viewers, I assume the feelings and
pocketbook matched the sentiment. Our
family could not afford movies, much less serious theater. So, just as I have memories of my mother
putting oodles of clothing through the Kmart Layaway window, television was for
me the majority of my entertainment in my growing up years. Even though we only had four channels and
could never afford cable, there was always something to watch on TV. While I did get a taste of the theater as an
actress, (all right, it was high school drama in Wyoming, but it was still on
stage.) television has always held a fond place in my heart.

I feel like I was raised by Designing Women, Family Ties, Bill
Cosby and so much more. There has
always been a resentment in me when people complain about how much television
is watched. Television, like books is
another world to live in. We see a
multitude of actual facial expressions and find people to love, laugh and cry with.

So, beginning the site www.seetvgo.com
is a celebration of that part of my life that loves to be entertained by
television. It has been really fun
delving into many shows I have never even heard of. While I am a bit of a prude and dislike some
of the shows, (In other words: I wish most of the shows on Adult Swim had never been
born.) I know there is something for
everyone on television.

Also,
it makes my heart happy when I see big names taking lowly TV jobs. Like Gary Sinise on CSI: NY. Television has slowly been revamped from
Kmart to something a bit more up class that serious actors don’t mind taking
part in on a regular basis (It may only be up to Walmart standards right now.) Maybe someday Kmart itself will actually compete with
Target. Maybe not.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

What
are the pitfalls of trying to create a company with three people who have three
different lives and lots of distraction and live in two different states?

We
have so many cons against us making it big:

*Two
of us are married with kids (Not to each other)- Pitfall: Spousal and offspring
interruption.

*One
of us had some major surgeries- Pitfall: One third of the workforce out on
medical leave.

*A rotation
of one of us seems to be sick every other week- Pitfall: See above.

*Leaky
Ceilings- Pitfall: they occurred in the room where Gary had all operations set
up. While he managed to overcome this
by moving everything temporarily, it blew a weekend.

*No
regular income from the site.

*No
ongoing budget.

*Other
things in the universe that we decide are more important.

*Two
full-time jobs and one PTA President.
(Yup, I’m a President. And it is a part time job with zero pay.)

*The
internet won’t work. This was me last
week on Tuesday. I totally forgot to
unplug and reset the modem box. After
waiting 12 hours to talk to Gary, he figured out I hadn’t done that, and
voila! This is my excuse for no blog
last week.

*We
have a best friend and sister and brother.
What happens when things don’t go well there? Hopefully we can all be friends at the end of this thing.

When one week or weekend is blown for one person in
a company of three, it’s like blowing 7 weeks of work. Okay, I’m making that number up, but really,
we meet every Sunday evening to for a business discussion. If you were able to take a snapshot of the
company progress from our first meeting over two years ago to now, it would
make the most lame flipbook of all time.

Although, since the beginning of February we have
been kicking in more regularly and it’s starting to pay off. www.seetvgo.com has been getting many more
new visitors and hopefully this will net out many more return visits.

One exciting accomplishment this week was that Gary
added A&E to our channel lineup.
Now we have links to Bates Motel, Hoarders, Storage Wars, and Duck
Dynasty, plus many more!

Please feel free to leave any feedback about
www.seetvgo.com itself here on the blog:
Do you like or not like the way it looks? Are there things we could do to make you want to come back more
often? We would love to hear from you!

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Trying
to figure out my social media posts is a bit challenging. There are as many directions to go as there
are tv shows on our site. (We have
links to more than one thousand shows!)
What do I compose that will make people say, “Oh yeah, I need to catch
up on "xyz" show through www.seetvgo.com!”
Or what do I highlight to help people find a new show that they might enjoy?

JD
added a great feature to the site last week.
On the home page in the third column, there are now 10 random shows that
have brand new episodes posted somewhere out on the web.If you are bored, this is a great place to start finding a new
tv addiction! One show posted today is the History channels "Vikings" which is also a new series.

But,
back to figuring out posts for our social media: when you look at all
television shows as a whole, they make up an entire world. From the classy to the down right trashy,
there are thousands of directions to go and right now, not a clear idea of how
to grab people’s interest.

And
how do I not let it focus all on my interests?
I could post Big Bang Theory things every week. (And NBC’s Thursday night lineup.) But, I’m
trying hard to capture a varied audience and draw in all the people who have
the common thread of just plain liking to watch television now and then, or all
the time, classy or trashy.

One
of the tools I have using for inspiration is “FlipBoard” which is an app on my
android tablet. I love FlipBoard. They
have made the internet into my own little magazine. To use it, you go in and pick websites that appeal to your
interests. For myself, I tailored it
to site that focus on entertainment and television news. It’s basically your favorites list. Then
FlipBoard puts all those “favorites” into a personal magazine that you can flip
through, seeing the most recent posts on those sites.

One
thing all three of us at www.seetvgo.com could use from our site’s visitors are ideas, feedback and input about our site. Are you liking my posts? What do you want to see more of? Is there is a channel you are really needing to see added to
our lineup? Since we are just starting,
there’s a hot chance one vote for a channel will get it added to our
lineup. Gary has promised to start
working on a new channel this week, and hopefully we’ll see it soon! (I don’t know what it will be, I forgot to
ask.)

We are plugging away, working to give you a better and better experience on our site. What do you want to see next?

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Have
you ever been to Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers flew successfully for
the first time? There are markers at
each successive spot where the plane landed after a short flight. It is exhilarating just walking the markers
and imagining the building excitement of the team as the plane went just a
little further, then a little more, and then, take off!

While
our website is nothing in comparison to man flying, I imagine I feel a little
like the Wright brothers at each little leap their plane took. Google Analytics helps our company track
users on our site. I am watching our
Google Analytics page everyday, seeing 5 users, 10, 25, and just hoping that
the thing will actually fly! We are
hovering close to the ground right now.

Our
marketing budget is zero. Ten or so
years ago, we would have not been able even to start a company with that kind of funding.
We do not know anyone to approach for investments, and not knowing how this thing will go, don't want to bring in investors just yet, because they usually expect a big return and that's not there right now. But thanks to modern social
media, we can get a little air under our wings.

I
found this great article:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2048588/30-Free-Ways-To-Market-Your-Small-Business-Site

Using
many of their ideas, I have begun to see an impact on the visits to our
site. We have seen some little surges
upward over the past three weeks or so.
My focus has been to daily or every other day post something related to
television on Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Being
an avid Facebook user, I was sure this would be the way to go, but I am starting
to think that Google+ will be much more useful. If I am correct, people that I put in my circles have the
opportunity to see my public posts. This is different from Facebook, where I think only our likes see the posts. In Google+ I
can also make comments on the posts of people in my circles, again, unlike Facebook, where it is only people who like us. Because I made my user name the name of the
website in Google+, that helps people see our site name and hopefully begin to create brand
recognition out there.

Pinterest
has also shown a few little leaps. I
have repinned quite a few pictures and had a few repinned. The interesting thing is that the pictures
that get repinned are typically the pictures of hot guys. (One was a shirtless Adam Levine; who
wouldn’t repin that? Okay, maybe a few
wouldn’t.) So, some of my strategy has become to find hot pictures of television stars to repin.

We need 30 likes on Facebook to
be able to track any activity on it. Aside
from a 26 close friends (thank you everyone!), we only have 1 stranger. I'm not even sure our current likes are seeing our posts.
My fault? Don’t know. But, I keep posting there just in case.

Then
there is Twitter. I am Tweeting here
and there, but only have 5 followers.
If a Tweet is made in a forest with no one around, does it make a sound? If nothing else, the people I am following who are in the television industry give me ideas for my own tweets and posts. My Twitter knowledge is pretty basic. This is one area I need to research more thoroughly.

That’s my social media Kitty Hawk right
now. Hopefully we will eventually get a
real take off. Things are looking up. Our highest day after using the advice of the article I mentioned earlier has been 27 visitors. This may not seem like a lot, but there were a lot of days with 3 visits or less, so getting into double digits is more exciting than you would think. So, I keep hoping for that big leap, you know? The one that leaves 27 in the dust.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

So
we have this little site called www.seetvgo.com. It is simple and uncluttered.
In some ways it is big, because it is linked to a world of television,
but within itself, it is small. Even
our company is small. We are run by
three people.

Myself,
a stay-at-home mom who’s kids are all in school now. I am hoping the income from this site will someday justify my
staying at home even though all the kids are in school. My degree was in accounting, which I worked
in for a few years before popping out babies.
My goal is to never be in corporate accounting again because every cell
in my body rebels against it. Yes, I am
the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) for www.seetvgo.com, but punting the accounting to my husband has happened a
couple of times when I just could not remember or process things. He has an accounting degree which he earned
before his engineering degree. He helps
for free.

My
business partners are JD who is my little brother, and Gary, who have been friends for years. They are always knocking around the idea of
going into business together. Their
other ideas for companies haven’t taken off, but they both know computer
programming. The idea for
www.seetvgo.com has been their most viable idea, so we have finally hit on
something that uses the guys’ strengths.

My
husband and I put up some capital,
rusty accounting skills and learn-as-I-go marketing skills to help the guys get
this little thing off the ground. JD is
CIO (Chief Information Officer) and Gary the COO (Chief Operations
Officer. (We’re all Americans, by the
way, if that’s attractive to you. I
know it could go either way)

JD is my brother and Gary is his friend. JD will kill me for calling him that. JD warrants death because I would call him
“JD Hogg” while growing up watching the Dukes of Hazzard and he DID NOT like
it. I’m hoping to help him get over
that in this blog. Or his name may
change again at some point in the future.

Both
of my partners work full time (unless Gary, a contract worker is in a “Laid
off” phase.) so, fitting a
forward-moving company into real life with lots of other distractions is
challenging.

Anyway, welcome to my blog about our little, new
business venture on a shoe string budget with three people who are hoping it
will take off.